Ale, and Tobacco 7 



shown below,' served as models for Wine, Beere, and Ale, were pub- 

 lished and probably acted in that year. 



Internal evidence would point to the years 1624-1626. There are 

 clear allusions to the statute against drunkenness, first passed in 1603. 

 This act was made perpetual in 1623-4 and enlarged shortly after the 

 accession of Charles in 1625.' The allusions may well have been 

 prompted by one or the other of these confirmations of the law. 



A reference to the rise in the price of wines would also, apparently, 

 fit this date.* According to the tables of Rogers, the price of claret 

 and sack, after remaining fairly stationary for several years, rose from 

 2s and 3s 4d in the preceding year to 2s 4d and 3s 8d the gallon in 

 1621-2, went down again in 1623-4, and rose permanently in 1624-5. 

 A still further increase in the price of sack and a marked advance for 

 the sweet wines is recorded for 1627-29. 



Finally, the deliberate and uncalled for vilification of tobacco in 

 the first edition^ suggests that the dialogue was probably composed 

 while James I's well-known aversion to the herb was still in the 

 ascendant. The prejudice of the reigning monarch had been similarly 

 flattered by Daniel in The Queen's Arcadia^" (1605) and by Jonson in 

 the Masque of the Metamorphosed Gipsies^^ (1621). The king is said 

 to have been deeply interested in the tobacco disputations which took 

 place at Oxford on the occasion of the same royal visit which saw the 

 performance of Daniel's masque. If Wine, Beere, and Ale, in its 

 earlier form, was prepared as an interlude for the entertainment of the 

 king, whether at Cambridge^^ or elsewhere, the tobacco passage would 

 be sufficiently explained. In the second edition the author or reviser 

 appears to have no scruple about giving the tobacco devil his due. 

 The intruder is, to be sure, violently disgusting to the other characters 



« Pp. 14 s. 



' See note to lines 472 and 325. We may infer from the latter reference that the statute or its 

 enforcement was of recent date. 



^ See note to line 121. 



* See p. 25 £f. of text. Observe that Wine's defence of the weed is purely satirical: " Why, when a 

 man hath not the wit wherewith to deliver his meaning in good words, this being taken dus presently 

 help him to spit it out gentleman-like." Note also that Sugar has the last word. 



'" Works, ed. Grosart, vol. II, p. 253 (lines 1110 ff.). 



^^ Works, ed. Cunningham, vol. VII, p. 394. The verses about tobacco do not occur in the manu- 

 script but are found in the earliest editions. 



^^ Perhaps for his last visit, in 1625, as I have suggested below, p. 19. 



